


the hallow bright

by trashyeggroll



Category: Captain Marvel (2019)
Genre: A little angst, Established Relationship, F/F, Mild Smut, PWP, Space Wives, danbeau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 16:22:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19154653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashyeggroll/pseuds/trashyeggroll
Summary: Carol Danvers may be the most powerful woman in the universe, but she still needs Maria Rambeau to hold her together some nights, and she always will.





	the hallow bright

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Danbeau! I'm forever in my feels about them.

A solid, familiar  _ thump  _ from the front porch pulls Maria Rambeau’s attention from her book. She’s so conditioned to it that she doesn’t look out the window like she did the first few dozen times it happened—she just pads to the front door in her sleep shirt, pausing to make sure Monica’s door is securely shut. 

It’s night in Louisiana, but the curtains over the front windows glow like it’s high noon, and she has to hold up a hand over her eyes as the other closes around the doorknob. 

Carol’s alien fire draws back when Maria steps onto the porch, and the mechanic can immediately tell that something’s wrong. Not physically—it’s never that, not anymore. No more black eyes or lips busted in barfights, not for the strongest person in the universe. The wounds present differently, too: Something in the sinking of her shoulders, the way her light brown eyes seem dulled, regardless of the glowing cloud still lifting her short blonde hair. 

Maria’s moving towards her partner before Carol truly seems to notice, but the fire blinks out anyway, and the blonde’s metal suit shrinks from her body just as Maria throws her arms around those strong shoulders. Carol’s stiff, even as her arms bend over the taller woman’s waist, but then she drops her head into Maria’s neck and lets out a shuddering breath, practically melting against her. Maria may not be a superhero, but Carol Danvers still just feels like a woman against her, muscular but slender, and the mechanic easily takes the burden of her weight into her own body.

She doesn’t press. She lets Carol sniffle into her skin, scratching her fingertips through the buzz-short hair at the back of the blonde’s neck. 

Eventually, Carol turns her head just enough to puff out words against Maria’s neck and it’s just a dry, “Hey, babe.”

As some of her worry loosens, Maria chuckles, kissing a grime-crusted temple, and cranes her neck so their eyes meet. Carol’s watery ones are curled up with a smile she can’t fully see, and she whispers back, “Hi. You wanna take off these clothes? You smell like space.” (High grade rocket fuel and stale air.)

“Right  _ here, _ Ri? In front of the garden vegetables?”

“O-okay, Danvers,” growls the mechanic, using her hold on Carol to lift and spin her towards the door. “Welcome home to you, too.”

While Carol showers, Maria settles herself back in bed with her book, even though she reads the same sentence six times before fully processing it. She’s only just turned the page when the frosted glass shower door slides open, and through the bathroom mirror, Maria can see the deep lines in the blonde’s expression, the way she has to take moments to steel herself, before softening her face to a smile to walk naked into the bedroom. 

Maria just raises an eyebrow at her; Carol knows  _ exactly _ how she looks, and the only kryptonite to such perfection is to ignore the rippling muscles of her arms, shoulders—and that  _ back. _ The mechanic looks at her book again with the last of her willpower, silent. She doesn’t have to peek to know Carol’s pouting across the room, but she feels the air cool as the blonde’s bravado does, and then Carol’s carefully sitting next to her on the bed. 

When the mechanic finally does put down her book, Carol immediately curls towards her, resting her head on the comforter over Maria’s lap and letting her eyes close. She huffs out a few breaths, and then says quietly, “I lost someone.”

Maria nods, even though Carol’s not looking at her, letting the blonde grip one hand against her cheek while the other brushes along her shoulder. The mechanic listens to the tale attentively, while Carol relays plot points that are always tragically familiar, even if the details change. There’s a planet in need, and there’s Captain Marvel versus The Danger. But while the Captain is near invincible, Carol Danvers is not, and neither are the mortals she protects—there’s lots of ‘shoulda, coulda, woulda’ on nights like this. Tonight, the story is of a starry-eyed youth in the wrong place at the wrong time, felled by an enemy explosion at an age comparable to Monica’s. Those were the hardest nights for Carol. 

When she’d joined the Air Force, whether or not they were letting women fly, Maria had anticipated a long career of loss. She just hadn’t expected the  _ career _ part to fall away, leaving her sharing in a grief that she only experienced through the depth of her partner’s pain—and she was happy to take what weight she could off those superhuman shoulders. She wanted to do it. Because this woman, this trembling, slender human in her arms, was the one that belonged to Maria and Monica Rambeau, to have and hold, forever.

It takes a long time, a lot of hushed words back and forth, affirmations that never lose their sincerity, but eventually, Carol sits up and lets Maria wipe her cheeks. 

“So… how was  _ your _ day?” 

Maria laughs softly, shaking her head, and replies, “Your daughter made a potato gun at school. It wasn’t part of an assignment.”

_ “My _ daughter is a free spirit,” counters Carol with an almost annoyingly charming wink. “She’s just trying to impress her crush.”

“Crush? What?”

Carol makes a zipper motion across her lips and chuckles.

“Oh, yeah? It’s gonna be like that?” Maria has to admit the movement dropped her focus from light brown eyes to that smart, curled mouth. She manages to add, “Is it Cameron Koh?”

“I am  _ sworn _ to secrecy,” says Carol with playful reverence, her smile shifting to a smirk. “But you could always try a little harder to convince me.” 

Maria might usually drag this game out more, but the clock says 4:14 am, and she wants to get to the point before she falls asleep. So she murmurs something that might’ve been  _ fine _ and drags Carol by the back of her neck to close the distance between them, mouths crashing together, and then steaming hot hands slide up her shirt.

“I love you,” Carol murmurs against her lips. “I miss you every day I’m not here.”

“I know, baby. I miss you, too.”

Before falling into each other’s arms, and then into bed together, after one wild night at the bar, neither of them had gone much farther than a furtive makeout session with other women—but all that matters to Maria is that Carol Danvers knows her body like no one else in the universe. Pale fingers trace up her ribs, around her breasts and up to circle a nipple, drawing it to a hard point. She lifts her arms so the sleep shirt slides off, and then Carol tugs down her underwear, tossing it carelessly over the side of the bed. 

There’s something spiritual in the way Carol looks at her when Maria rolls them and raises up on hands and knees over the panting blonde. It’s like even though Captain Marvel flies to remote corners of the universe as part of her day job, the most breathtaking thing she’s ever seen is Maria Rambeau. Nobody else in the cosmos looks at Maria like that, or makes her feel like Carol does. Treasured, wanted. Needed. 

She drops her shoulder and snakes a hand between them, finding the patch of dark blonde curls, and then what she knows are candy pink lips. Just the brush of her fingertips has Carol arching up, those intense eyes screwing shut, and Maria knows tonight’s not the sort of night to tease. She kisses under Carol’s strong jaw as her fingers find the blonde’s clit, already slick and strained, thrumming with her racing pulse. 

Maria will never get tired of this, of watching her partner’s face as her mouth drops open, of hearing the little gasps and moans escaping as she uses firm, direct pressure like Carol likes, until the blonde’s bucking up into her hand and whimpering into her mouth, holding onto Maria’s shoulders like she’ll fly away otherwise.

“Please,” whispers Carol, hoarsely, bringing one hand down to push at Maria’s wrist. 

And like always, Maria relents, smiling as she presses two fingers into slick, gripping heat. No matter how many times she’s gotten to do this, the first thrust always manages to take her breath away. Carol’s inner walls adjust to the intrusion with little flutters of the muscles, and Maria starts slow, pumping in and out with deep, deliberate strokes while her thumb swipes along her clit above. It’s not long before Carol’s dripping into her palm, murmuring encouragement and nonsense against Maria’s neck between superheated kisses. The mechanic only registers a lot of  _ more _ and  _ yes, baby. _

The bedsprings creak and whine as Maria picks up pace, adding a third finger and curling them along Carol’s front wall with each pass, lunging her hips behind her wrist for extra leverage. Her own body’s coiling, the tug in her lower belly tightening into something close to an ache, and her own arousal is pooling between her legs as they move against each other. 

She  _ feels _ Carol’s orgasm coming before it hits, and Maria grits her teeth to focus on pulling her over the edge—until one of the blonde’s hands is suddenly slipping between her own thighs, easily finding her clit and pressing against the sensitive bundle of nerves, moving back and forth. She has to bite her lip so hard it hurts to muffle a responding groan, and between Carol’s deft fingers and the feel of the blonde clenching around her own, it isn’t long before her muscles are spasming and seizing, and she rips her face from the crook of Carol’s neck, their eyes locking as they tip over the cliff together. As her own orgasm rocks through her body like a shockwave, Maria buries her fingers to the knuckle, gasping in time with the ripples she can feel around them, and holds there, while Carol lazily circles her clit a few times, carrying Maria through the aftershocks, before letting her hand fall away. 

For a few minutes, they lay breathing together, and Maria’s too hot, sweat covering her face, neck, and chest, but there’s no convincing her to move from her position until Carol asks. They missed almost a decade of getting to do this together, and these days it’s still a too-rare luxury. She knows from years of pillow talk and intimacy that Carol likes feeling Maria seated inside her, grounding her to these precious nights together. Captain Marvel’s both completely vulnerable and totally safe with her partner sprawled over her—the only place in the universe where Carol Danvers can feel that way. 

But eventually before they both drift to sleep, the women untangle themselves, popping to the bathroom to wash hands of come and their faces of sweat, and then they fall into their bed together again. Maria curls against the blonde’s back and throws an arm over her waist, nuzzling the short blonde hair under her nose. They fall asleep just before the sun starts turning the sky from purple to blue. 

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me on tumblr [@trashyeggroll](https://trashyeggroll.tumblr.com/)


End file.
